


Foundations

by lyriumyue



Series: Silt and Timber [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Family Drama, Gen, Past Relationship(s), brother-sister bonding, multi-sibling trevelyans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 13:09:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12841854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyriumyue/pseuds/lyriumyue
Summary: Aedhin reflects on his sister's name-day, the way things have changed, the way they haven't. He's broken more things than he's fixed but this...this one means more.He's trying to speak in a way that Kiaran understands.





	Foundations

**Author's Note:**

> Scene removed for approximately ch. 23/24 of In Blackest Envy. It was too heavy and needed a tense shift to convey what I wanted so I felt it was better as a companion.

On the 27th of Wintermarch, 9:19 Dragon, the sun broke over the walls of Ostwick as they arrived. Already frustrated with the non-stop journey from their uncle's home in Markham, he tried (and failed, twice) to keep from lashing out at the servants that grabbed at him and Etain when they arrived at the house. Their mother wasn't there to see them. The absence of their father was not unexpected.

Not one hour, and they were scrubbed and combed and dressed and off in another carriage to the Chantry. Rodhain, his pretty new wife, their parents, and the new babies, were long gone.

He scuffed the toes of his nice boots against the carriage seat because why not? He was excited about the nephew he'd meet in Cloudreach. Aedhin had never been less enthused about the prospect of another sibling, and told his sister no less than ten times over the course of the last eight months.

He didn't tell Etain how he was alone in his dreams, and he wasn't an idiot, older women died more than younger women when they gave birth. Six months confined to her bed and an unflinching support of their father when he decided to send to two of them to Markham to study and socialize over the rainy season. He didn't tell Etain that he asked Andraste to take the baby instead if she had to pick one, or how an hour after he woke in a cold sweat and prayed to the Maker to forgive his cruel, selfish heart and spare them both.

The jealousy pinching inside of him made it hard to breathe and Aedhin tugged at the ribbon tied in his collar and avoided the eyes of the clerics, the revered mothers, the hundred well-aged faces of Ostwick's greatest, for the entire march up the aisle to stand near his older brother. Etain held up her chin with her eyes locked on the stained glass image of Andraste in the sun, behind the center podium.

He didn't remember much about the ceremony, fidgeting instead with the buttons on his coat cuffs. His mother still looked weak, and thin - he remembered thicker arms, more bounce to the curl in her hair when he left. But Andraste let her live, as as the light reflected glittering and rainbow through the Chantry, he calmed himself when her eyes sent a smile his way. Occasionally he stole a glance to Rodhain, all height and steely reverence, the picture of familial excellence with his arm carefully pressed in the small of his pregnant wife's back. He straightened, and hoped he'd one day look that regal, strong, and assured. He clasped his hand behind his back and hoped it made his shoulders look broader, older, commanding.

Etain was the one to tug on Aedhin's coat, and in that moment, Aedhin felt the Maker's love and blessed breadth of forgiveness when the veil was pulled back from that wooden bassinet.

It was that night in the comfort of their own home and away from the prying eyes of their noble circle, that he stole away from the adults to the nursery. His mother met him with a kiss on the forehead; six months ago he'd have pushed her away and insisted he wasn't a little boy anymore.

His throat dried when he tried to tell her he missed her the most.

His new sister was fussy, while his brother slept with arms splayed in open-mouthed content. They were _tiny_. Aedhin remarked he'd hunted hares with his cousin that were bigger.

"The Maker knows their siblings will protect them until they're grown," his mother said with such soft confidence as she showed him how to fold his arms and hold his sister without dropping her. As soon as they were separated, his brother cringed under his soft white blanket.

"What if they both cry?" he asked, with all the cynicism of a teenager that had never been far from home. He felt his ears burn with embarrassment, a moment forever lined in his memory. He fleetingly wondered if his sister-in-law had to teach his brother, or if Rodhain had learned when Etain and Aedhin were new and soft and helpless. He wondered if women knew how without being taught, and he wondered if Andraste held them all like this when they were small and unknowing and left to dream under the stars.

His mother laughed, and though the circles under her eyes were more pronounced than he'd ever seen, she sat him in the chair and positioned his arms again. "You must exercise Andraste's patience." A tiny baby was placed in the crook of each elbow and both quieted once they were set.

27th of Wintersmarch, 9:19 Dragon, Aedhin Trevelyan learned the world was infinitely larger, more understood by others, and terrifingly more finite than he'd ever known. He asked the Maker to give him strength enough that these babies could look at him the way he looked at Rodhain.

 

 

27 Wintersmarch, 9:42.

He's managed an hour and a half of discussion at the War Table before sunrise when Leliana is pulled away and Cullen excuses himself to oversee the construction of the new barracks in the south wing.

Aedhin knows Josephine's told him who sent the lovely chairs for her office, he just can't remember, but he sinks into it all the same with both hands over his eyes and fingers pressing into his temples.

One of Leliana's scouts enters as the sun rises over the castle walls. "Package for the Inquisitor," is all he says, "Thought it was addressed to Lady Montilyet, first. Straight off a horseman from the Marches." Then he hands Aedhin a letter. "Nightingale sends apologies to Lady Trevelyan. She reads all the post, also thought this was for the Inquisitor." He salutes, drops a stack of leather-wrapped paper packages and an envelope. He leaves only once Aedhin sits up to dismiss him.

"Ah, these must be the books you requested from Kirkwall," the ambassador notes. "You know, I wish you'd reconsider your stance on the fete..."

"No." He's sunken back into the chair, fingers digging, pushing at the constant ache, trying not to tug at stitches or pick at the shaved sides of his head.

"Your family in Orlais--"

"Josephine." When he puts down his hands to squint at her, he can feel it - a bubbling of rage, a feral protectiveness. "If you disrespect this again I'll personally add your job to Cullen's desk of things to do." He doesn't mean it, but he's tired, tired of this argument, tired of running in circles with these people that promised to support him.

She watches him for a long time. "Your sister deserves to be acknowledged, not forgotten. At least let us do _something_."

"They were two," he says and stands, taking the packages into his arms. Aedhin angles away from the sun.

He waits, watches her, knows he's being unfairly critical but he can't stop, he watches Josephine until the understanding lights in her eyes.

"My utmost apologies."

He doesn't say anything else when he leaves, but Kiaran's conspicuous absence in the great hall for breakfast tells him what he needs to know. He heads first to his quarters, leaves two of the three packages on his desk for later. By now Aedhin knows how to walk up the stairs and along the inner balcony walkway with his eyes closed. He knows how many steps to the top, where not to stick out his elbows, lest he knock the pretty plants Vivienne has nursed on her windowsill. It's eighteen paces after the corner to Kiaran's door and he does this all with his eyes shut to the burning assault of the morning light. He's still snowblind on the left, and much, much worse on the right. The compromise he's made for morale is to forgo the blindfold and let Cole help him count the steps, the movements, from one area to another.

"It's me," he says at the door, doesn't knock because first, his hands are full, and second, she's awake and they both know that. Kiaran's never slept well at the best of times, between chasing imaginary fairies in the dark to ruminating the injustices around her. Cole talks to Aedhin - accidentally, usually - to assuage his fears, Kiaran usually eats when no one can see her, but that she and Cullen seem to find each other in a bowl of peaches in the kitchen after midnight. His sister doesn't rest much, and he bets she's not resting now.

Eventually, to his relief, she turns the latch and opens the heavy wooden door and he's never been so happy her window curtains are drawn. When the door groans shut behind him he finally opens his eyes.

A single candle flickers in a glass lamp and a hundred papers and books are splayed across her desk.

She's wearing the same clothes as yesterday and her hair is still lazily pulled in a half-knot at the back of her head. Kiaran's eyes are puffy and they're a sullen, near-brown now.

"Don't," is all she says.

He holds out a basket of bread, meat, and berry cider as a peace offering. "Just me," he repeats as she takes the basket. He extends his arm to her, a leather-wrapped package tucked under his right.

She looks torn at first and with a begrudging sigh tucks in half-heartedly for the embrace. Aedhin ghosts his lips over her forehead, it hurts still to move his neck too quickly. She pulls away seconds after as if the affection hurts.

"Not to make a big deal but it's important to _me_ ," he says after a while of staring in the silence. Kiaran ignores the food but opens the little metal flask of cider. She drinks it without looking at him, settles into the chair at her desk. She's still tiny, maybe soft deeper past the outside, he thinks.

She still doesn't make eye contact with him when he sits on the edge of her bed. He tells her about how irritated he was to leave Markham before Wintersend, and Etain was absolutely the most suffocating member of the family when she was nineteen. Aedhin gets a sharp laugh out of her when he reminisces on how he used to hope he'd be sturdy, noble, _husband-like_ , like Rodhain when he was a child. Eventually, she tears a strip of jerky in half and eats it like she's being forced. He takes a roll and carefully mirrors her.

He's halfway through teasing her about the yellow rashvine incident when she's half gone in her thoughts. Aedhin knows she's trying to be polite because he's trying and failing.

"You know, mother had some wonderful advice for me about you two on your name day," he says. "She told me I'd need Andraste's patience. You don't suppose that's how this whole world-burning nightmare brought us together, do you?"

The sound she makes is halfway between a laugh and a sob around a mouthful of bread.

This time, she doesn't flinch when Aedhin comes close and gently tousles her hair. He sets the package down in front of her, and the letter.

"Leliana reads everything that comes in," he explains when she notices the seal's been lifted. "She says sorry."

His sister murmurs something unintelligible. She puts the envelope aside to suspiciously unwrap the package.

"What is this?"

"Open it. Being the Inquisitor means I can import all sorts of illegal things from Kirkwall for my baby sister's name day."

She huffs, rolls her eyes, her defense mechanism. Aedhin feels his left eye throb and he sits again on the bed with one hand over it. She's absolutely silent when the leather and paper fall away. He's impressed. Lochlan told him he knew just the person to acquire it from, and he expected what they'd receive was something a little worn, a little loved, with bent corners and memories in the page edges where tiny magic-learning hands left their mark.

Whoever sold this to him loved their library dearly.

The book's hard leather cover is impressively engraved, and a beautiful gold-leaf pattern embosses it front to back. The bookmark inside the first page is braided silk, midnight blue and silver and brilliant emerald. Lochlan doesn't make those for just anyone, and Aedhin carries his inside his coat jacket, and never takes it out since the avalanche and the burying of Haven.

He tries and he fails, almost as often as he tries, and he's learning the language she was forced to speak in Circle shadows and the grimy underbelly in Kirkwall. She's tiny and her edges are hard but her quiet is soft, he's figured out this much at least, that in the absence of noise and argument she's vulnerable and right now, it's the end-of-a-storm, peaceful denoument type settling wordlessness between them.

Tevene fairytales, even in translation, are all but snarled at in Orlais and Ferelden. In Ostwick, it simply ceases to exist. But, family, blood, are _everything_ , and there were many such little books and treasures locked behind glass in the family library. _Bold in deed_ , the Chantry-loved Trevelyans and their blasphemous literature. Bits and pieces imported by homesick Trevelyans when they first left the Imperium behind many, many generations ago.

It's the ancient wood on which the legacy is built.

Kiaran's nod is so subtle, the barely-there dip of her chin, Aedhin almost misses it. She touches her throat, as if the words are stuck.

He tries to lighten up the mood a little. "I'm not supposed to actually read for a few more weeks so you'll have to try to make your voice as engaging as mine when you read it to me," he teases. "And don't change the prince's fate in the story with the tower, I read that one every night for a year and a half to the two of you, I know how it ends."

She doesn't laugh, but she doesn't cringe. A start. She reaches for the envelope and thumbs the wax seal.

"I don't remember whose this is." A barely-there mumble. Embarrassment. A harder thing for her to admit.

"Giacalone of Antiva," he says without looking. "You can tell it's Etain's because the wax always falls perfectly."

"Etain?"

Kiaran's lips press together. She pulled the papers folded in the envelope with careful fingers, looks to him as if she's waiting for permission, and as she opens the letter there's a small clunk against the desk.

In the guttering candlelight glitters a delicate, gauzy silver chain bearing an antique pendant wrought in fine filigree, with a flawless labradorite stone in the center.

Aedhin touches his chest when he recognizes it.

Kiaran's moved on to the flowing script of their sister's calligraphy, and she discards the first page quickly before moving to the second, then the third. Her bony shoulders shake a little but she maintains her composure.

"Thank you." Less cold, as the words whisper from her. "I'll show you later. I just...I'll show you later."

He's worn out his welcome, he knows this, and as he stands to leave he reflects back to a passing moon in a clear seaside sky, as their mother effortlessly picks up two red-faced, sleeping infants and tucks them into a cradle before telling him to wash up and go to bed and she missed him and his sister and she's so proud of them and happy they're home.

"I'm proud of you," he says, "And I'm happy you're here."

He doesn't look back, closes his eyes like he's supposed to and steps out into the sun, spine straight, shoulders level, like a leader should, and feels his way back into Skyhold's great hall to move the day along like it's not the 27th day and it's not anything special and he's not a bad brother and he's not fighting the brutal shame that he can't seem to get any of this right.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes these things end off more tense than they start.


End file.
